


Fool's Gold

by horchata



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: 2016 Summer Olympics, Communication Failure, M/M, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 09:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8007307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horchata/pseuds/horchata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>He'd always known Kageyama didn't have a breath of common sense, but this? This was something else. </p>
  <p>"Kageyama Tobio!" Hinata shouts. "<i>How</i> could you send this to me <i>in the mail</i>?"</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Fool's Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Squeaking just under the deadline for kagehina day. Re-written from the SASO prompt:
>
>> Package: small but heavy, wrapped in a postage envelope.  
> From: Kageyama Tobio  
> To: Hinata Shouyou  
> Note: _We won. This should've been yours. Please call me back._  
> 

Kageyama was doing his best to keep moving.

It had been like a dream. He'd wanted nothing more in his life than to play on Team Japan and go to Rio, to walk out of Omotesando Station wearing his jersey to play at Yoyogi in 2020. In high school he'd added one more person to his dream without a second thought. He and Hinata had done it, arrived with their usual blustering fervor as Japan's youngest rising star players, even younger than Ishikawa-san. Their stamina and skill had them subbed into practice matches, taken to meets, considered and selected for the Olympic roster; they had access to the gyms, the food, the transportation. 

The doctors.

Now, as always, Kageyama is the youngest player. But he is the sole youngest.

It's been a few days since Hinata woke up, eyes unfocused, wrist cradled tight in plastic and velcro, and was told he was done for the season. Kageyama felt like Hinata'd taken the news the best anyone could: screaming his voice to shreds and whispers, making his headache even worse, which made it easier for his coach to deliver the same news again the day after.

"Our doctors told me this was a very serious concussion and a very serious sprain. We are all grateful you are in their capable hands, Hinata-kun."

"Yes," Hinata's broken voice whispered.

"Stop talking, dumbass," Kageyama had murmured. He'd clenched his fist around the corner of Hinata's hospital pillow.

"We want you to be at your best moving forward, so please rest and work hard at your rehabilitation."

It was as much of a dismissal as it was an entreaty. Hinata nodded his head. Kageyama knew that for all his heart felt like it was breaking, Hinata must have been... Thinking back, Kageyama realized it was that he had never seen Hinata look so dull, even accounting for how low the light was, how quietly they all needed to speak.

"Thank you very much, Masashi-sensei," Hinata-san had said, bowing at her son's bedside. "We'll see he's taken care of."

"Of course," Masashi-sensei said, and then turned to Kageyama. "Kageyama-kun, practice is one hour from now. I expect your presence."

Kageyama bowed deep. "Yes, Masashi-sensei."

When coach left the room, Hinata closed his eyes. "Go, Kageyama."

Kageyama stiffened. "Hah? No."

"Kageyama, leave," he said, eyebrows scrunching.

"No," Kageyama repeated, confused. "Hinata--"

"I don't want you to see me like this," he'd whispered, and it caught fast in Kageyama's throat.

"Shut up," Kageyama said, felt a slow hysteria coat the inside of his lungs. "The light's so low I can't see you anyway."

"Kageyama, please go," Hinata warbled, and turned his head away.

Hinata-san looked up at Kageyama with something like surprise, something like pity, and Kageyama's cheeks and eyes burned with shame. "I'll walk him out, Shou-chan," she said, gently, looking at Kageyama while she said it.

Kageyama was suddenly so frustrated he couldn't breathe. He closed his eyes, bowed his head low, close to Hinata's bruised forehead, where his eyelids seemed thin and waxen. "You -- Hinata, please get better soon," Kageyama said, and heard horrible things in his voice.

In the hallway, his eyes hurt from the hospital lights. Kageyama gave his eyes a moment to adjust, and another moment, and even after a full fifteen seconds he was still crying, and then sobbing, and then he found himself bent over Hinata-san's shoulder, gathered in her arms, and he was so angry he couldn’t hold himself together better for Hinata’s own mother.

"He'll come around," she'd said, holding him, rocking him. "He's just so stubborn and proud, you know him Tobio-chan. He'll come around."

He nodded into the soft fabric of her coat and tried not to grip it too tight.

And this morning, when the third call to Hinata's phone slips to his pleasant voicemail message, he tries to believe her. He's stubborn and proud, but he'll come around.

Kageyama shoves his phone in his pocket and gets back to practice.

 

****

. 

Kageyama hears about Hinata's progress from other people.

Hinata-san calls him to let him know when Hinata comes home from the hospital, but warns him that Hinata is still quite tired, and sleeping a lot. He hears from Yachi when Hinata's mother returns to Miyagi and she ran into her at the shrine. Yachi tells him that Hinata-san said Hinata is doing okay enough to be left alone in Tokyo reliably. Kageyama thanks her for letting him know. He tries not to worry. Hinata is stubborn. He won't be undone by a concussion, a bad sprain.

An ugly sprain, Kageyama thinks. A serious concussion. He must force himself to finish his dinner.

He hears about Hinata learning how to use his left hand from Yamaguchi. He's going to appointments with orthopedic surgeons, starting physical therapy to strengthen his left hand while his right wrist rests. He takes meloxicam that makes him woozy sometimes. Someone bought Hinata training chopsticks and Tsukishima didn't even tease Hinata for them more than once.

Kageyama calls him every day. Hinata does not answer.

It seems like some kind of ridiculous prank that Kageyama cannot reach Hinata. Kageyama tries catching him at physical therapy, but Hinata’s sessions are scheduled during team practices. Kageyama thinks about skipping practice for no more than thirty seconds before somehow Masashi-sensei senses the thought and positions Kageyama for setting drills for the first full hour. He thinks about going by Hinata's apartment, by Kozume-san's apartment, by the monjayaki hole-in-the-wall Hinata's been obsessed with since they moved to Tokyo.

Hinata never responds to his messages, his calls.

Kageyama is at a loss.

"Maybe he's tired of you, Tobio-chan," Oikawa-san says from behind his beer.

Kageyama feels the words kick the wind from his lungs.

"Or, well--" and something uncomfortable rises in Oikawa-san's voice. "Maybe he's just tired. Concussions are dangerous, you should know. And exhausting."

It feels like a concession. Kageyama stirs his ramen. Oikawa-san's voice is as close as it will ever come to an apology, and it almost makes hearing it worse. 

"His brain has to relearn how to deal with the world. It can be hard to look at phone screens, or read, or hear music. They can even change someone’s personality.” Oikawa-san’s drink returns to the counter with a _thunk_. “Perhaps you're just too loud for him, now."

When Kageyama calls Hinata that night, he reminds himself to speak soft and low.

"Hinata, the team says hello and hopes you're healing quickly. When we work on spiking drills it's just not the same. And I --" he stops, and swallows, speaks again almost at a whisper. "Call me back, dumbass. It's been a week."

But it's the same as before: his phone never rings.

 

****

 

His tosses are off. They're off like Kageyama wasn't nineteen and hundreds of kilometers away from Miyagi. He knows it, and it makes him so angry that he plays worse.

He’s pulled to the side to get chided in such a generous way he feels sick about it. He should really be thrown off the team; instead he just gets a lecture.

"Get your head in the fucking game, Kageyama," his captain hisses at him, when he’s done. "We're on a plane to Brazil in twenty-two days."

Kageyama is deeply ashamed. His eyes close against the heat that springs up behind them. "Yes," he says, and probably cannot bow low enough to make up for it.

He hears a ragged sigh. "I know -- we're all fucking thinking about Hinata, but he's not coming. He's recovering. _You're_ supposed to come, so you get the fuck back to work, or there's nothing anyone can do for you, here. There are twenty other setters to take your spot, and I want none of them. Fix yourself."

Kageyama goes to his bag to get a drink of water, wipe off his face, and tries not to check his phone.

 

****

 

Kageyama supposes he should be grateful he knows Hinata’s not more seriously hurt.

He hears from Tendou about Hinata getting headaches from his phone screen and that he’s not using it. He hears from Nishinoya that Hinata can’t listen to music. Yamaguchi tells him more about Hinata’s apparently hilarious attempts to use his left hand.

Yachi calls. Yachi tells him about Hinata getting angry at things that don’t matter. Yachi tells him about Hinata bursting into tears when Tanaka told him he’s thinking about going to Nagano for the Onbashira festival in four years. Yachi tells him, gently, so gently -- Hinata is having a hard time, how he seems confused, but wants -- Yachi tells him how Hinata just needs time.

Everything in Kageyama rejects that so fiercely that he excuses himself and hangs up. He isn’t even watching when he runs into Tsukishima in the market.

“Hardheaded as ever,” Tsukishima says, rubbing his chin.

“Sorry,” Kageyama mutters, and helps pick up Tsukishima’s groceries. “Your eggs look okay.”

Tsukishima nods. They stare at each other. Kageyama presses his lips together, but he knows. He knows and Tsukishima knows. He’s going to break first.

It comes out all at once, ugly: “Do you know why Hinata won’t talk to me?” 

Tsukishima’s stare doesn’t change. “I’m surprised you haven’t broken down his door.”

“Is that what he wants?”

“I’m sure his landlord doesn’t.”

“Tsukishima,” Kageyama says, and he hears his voice tighten and strain. He swallows the cold, sour quiver so he can speak. “ _Please._ ”

Tsukishima braces himself, just ever so slightly. Kageyama remembers it from high school, remembers the set of his shoulders before the opponent’s serve. When they were younger, he could tell if Tsukishima was going to be useful to their play by the way he shifted his weight. Kageyama can’t read him, not anymore. 

Tsukishima’s gaze is hard. “He doesn’t want to see you right now.” 

Kageyama waits, but that’s all Tsukishima has to say. _He doesn’t want to see you right now._ It echoes in his chest like the bounce of a missed toss. He can barely breathe.

“Don’t you have some game to train for?” Tsukishima says, and it’s almost kind.

Kageyama buys himself some milk and leaves.

 

****

 

Kageyama’s too dedicated to the team and to Rio to do more than think about drinking, but that night he stays up later than he should staring at his phone in the dark, thinking about when Hinata fell, thinking about the crack his head made on the floor, about how excited Hinata had been to even walk on that volleyball-dedicated court for the first time months before, how Hinata was wearing the first shirt Team Japan had ever given them when he’d fallen and how it was ruined from the blood from his nose, how Hinata’s eyes hadn’t responded to light, how he’d been taken by an ambulance to the hospital and how Kageyama had to take a train instead, and wait and wait and wait until he threw up in the lobby like Hinata would have surely thrown up before their first Olympic game, and Kageyama calls. 

“Hinata, dumbass, I don’t understand,” he says to Hinata’s voicemail. “I don’t understand. What’s -- what have I done? How can I make this better? What do I need to do?”

He knows he babbles on a bit more because when he sees the call record on his phone the next day it lasts almost two minutes, but he can’t remember more of what he said. He doesn’t get a response. Fine. Kageyama resolves not to call for a week.

(He doesn't last a day.)

 

****

 

Once, someone else picks up Hinata's phone.

"Kageyama?" a voice says.

"Azumane-san?" Kageyama says, surprised. "How did--"

"Hinata's sleeping," Azumane-san says. His voice is quiet. "I, uh, I meant to, um, turn the ring off, but. I answered the call instead."

He laughs a little sheepishly. Kageyama is stunned into momentary silence. Hinata keeps in contact with whomever has the chance to meet him; everyone who knows Hinata instantly becomes a lifelong friend. But, somehow -- of course everyone from Karasuno was included in that, but.

There was Azumane-san in Hinata's apartment. There, when Hinata was sleeping. _Azumane-san_ , who was a part of the team for just one year; him before Kageyama?

It feels like a lance, like a missed toss, echoing.

"Pardon me. I can call back later?"

"Ah," Azumane-san says, uncertain. "I'm not. I'm not sure about that, Kageyama."

Kageyama stills. "No?"

"Well, of course, you can always, um. Of course you can, but."

They lapse into silence. Kageyama's fingers ache and only then does he realize how hard he's gripping his countertop.

“So, Kageyama. Um, so how’s--”

"Thank you for answering the call, Azumane-san. I hope you're well."

He hangs up and breathes slowly into his hands.

 

****

 

Practices become more grueling. There are twelve people going to Rio, so they constantly play each other in matches. It's lightning-fast and exhausting. Kageyama is one of many skilled people who could be playing for Japan, and every time he sets the ball, it needs to be worthy of the global stage. 

Then, the team starts their taper, to save strength, to help their blood volume. There's a lot of science behind it, Kageyama knows, but he also has always felt like it wasn't necessary for him to know exactly what it did, just that it was doing something helpful. That he should follow directions.

"It will be important for you to reduce your stress levels as much as possible," their trainer tells him, and Kageyama has to hold his breath to not burst into laughter. It's almost been three weeks now that he hasn't heard from Hinata, and his heart feels angry, tangled and worn.

He's sitting at home when he decides that Hinata can be a part of his taper, too. That maybe he can try to stop caring little by little that Hinata inexplicably doesn't want to see him, doesn't want to speak to him, has somehow become a different, disappeared person. He imagines a schedule like the one on their wall: Reduce phone calls to once every other day; less one rep, one fewer kilogram his chest has to lift. Let something in himself try to scab over.

It feels impossible now, but Kageyama’s never let that stop him before. It just means he’ll have to work harder at it. Kageyama has never refused hard work.

 

****

 

Kageyama can’t sleep. 

In seven hours he’s headed to the airport, to Rio. He’s been packed for days. They’ve been tapering for longer, and Kageyama’s been trying, trying hard not to overwork his body, not to stress his mind, not to let this affect his performance, but tonight feels like a defeat. He knows himself. It’s too late and he’s too tired, too wired, too worried. What he should do is turn over and cover his head with his blanket to get to sleep.

What he’s going to do is message Hinata.

He gave up on phone calls and LINE, and is staring now at an empty e-mail message. He doesn’t know what to say. Nothing he’s said or felt has worked -- not getting angry, or being persistent, or begging, or demanding. Nothing has helped him hear anything from Hinata. Hinata really doesn’t want to talk to him anymore, for whatever reason. It feels like it goes beyond stubborn pride. Hinata isn’t the type. Kageyama’s never known Hinata to hold a grudge. Kageyama is no stranger to feeling as if who he is has ruined something important, but he has also never felt so desperate to take it back and undo himself. 

He types his e-mail in formal Japanese.

_Hinata, I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone, for now. Please accept my apology for my persistence. We have been a team for so long, that it has been difficult to play without you. Please forgive me for not respecting how you need space. But understand that I cannot stay quiet forever._

Kageyama reads it out loud to himself again and again. It doesn’t sound like him, it sounds like someone more distant and diplomatic, like Sugawara-san, and maybe that’s what it needs to be. Maybe it needs to be something different from Kageyama. 

But he can’t help himself; right before he sends it, he adds: _I’ll try again when we win._

Kageyama sets his phone on the floor, screen-down, and closes his eyes.

 

****

 

In the morning, he sees a response: 

_Good luck._


End file.
